


Bullet Hole

by JenCforCarolina



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 09:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7752598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fireteam Heartbreak. Eriana has a short rope and Toland’s title of shattered may be more literal than assumed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bullet Hole

**Author's Note:**

> [Also on Tumblr](http://jencforcarolina.tumblr.com/post/148852189538/bullet-hole)

He shouldn’t have been surprised, perhaps, that Eriana was armed. Guardians were always armed, all of them. Exos, twice as so. But he hadn’t quite estimated (perhaps it hadn’t seemed necessary) exactly to the extent that Eriana was packing.

In planning, gauging, cartographing, the degree of her weaponry had simply always been sufficient. Eriana the veteran. Eriana the war survivor. Eriana who lost it all at Mare Imbrium. Hubris to assume she would ever disarm. Equal hubris to not discern exactly how steeled she was. And when she was prepared to reveal it.

He was allowed, then, the haunt of surprise, the air of fear, that overtook him when she pulled the sidearm from the folds of her cloak (so that was what that particular belt was in place for, a holster). His eyes were permitted to widen a fraction before rigor overtook him and his body fell back with a smoking hole in the forehead.

* * *

The room filled with blessed silence and the chemical odor of ozone. Eriana tutted. Tarlowe rose and made for the door, muttering something about people asking questions.

Then nothing happened, for ten seconds too long. Eris moved from the tabletop. Came to kneel beside the body, then glanced up with a muted panic that showed only in her brow. Eriana’s arm dropped to her side. She shuffled closer -a trick, she assumed. A carefully planned joke from the most theatrical Warlock to no longer exist.

Ampilyne appeared, finally, delayed. Hummed in something like terror and expanded, blue light filling the room. Sai flopped back down, thinking the excitement over.

Ampilyne did not shift from her stressed pre-rez state. Thirty seconds passed and she again had Sai’s attention. Eris waved a hand -a compartmentalized, frantic, motion masked well. Her own Ghost appeared, flitting a bit uncertainly.

The room filled with unspoken turmoil. Thoughts bounced between the three of them. If Toland could not rez, what would that mean? What did it mean about his Light, the rumors, his improper obsessions. And then the realization it would mean nothing because then death was death.

Toland reappeared just as Sai got to her feet. She retreated in the same motion, back to the couch with a whump carefully crafted to mask a relieved sigh. Eris similarly sat back, with not even a hint of worry. Eriana ticked again and crossed her arms, gun still in hand, feigning impatience.

Toland burned.

“Have you any sense of basic decency you clattering maniac.” A fog of suffocating fury emanated from him.

“You’re alive aren’t you?” Her voice was unnecessarily haughty, playing off the tension that had built in all of them.

“Oh am I?” He demanded, clearly frazzled. “Well you’re quite fortunate I still have the barest of a link to the-” He cut himself off, and made busy checking his limbs. Ampilyne buzzed about him as well, as if equally worried. Eriana ground her jaw like she wanted to order him to continue.

“Relax.” Sai drawled from the couch, brazening through the uncertainty. “We’re in the City, you’ve got all the Light you need. There was no danger, your Ghosts just slow.”

Ampilyne sent a blink of displeasure her way and vanished.

Toland took to muttering again, the questionable sin that had gotten him shot in the first place. “Acuasal is the opposite of our basic reality and has a tendency to counter the-” he stopped again, maybe from the displeasure Eriana began to emit again, or maybe because he looked down and saw Eris still crouched where he had been slain, her eyes piercing suspicion.

“Don’t do that again.” He pointed a threatening finger at Eriana.

“I don’t think I will.”

The Shattered swept away, brunswick green robes snapping a moment before the door to the apartment’s other tiny room did.

“Too long.” Eris whispered, and Eriana had second thoughts.


End file.
